Police to summon Jokowi for ‘Obor Rakyat’ saga

JAKARTA. The National Police is scheduled to summon president-elect Joko “Jokowi” Widodo as a witness in the libel case filed against the people behind the Obor Rakyat tabloid.

“We have sent the summons to Jokowi’s lawyer, Teguh Samudra, on Tuesday. We are expecting to question Jokowi on Thursday,” National Police spokesperson Insp. Gen. Ronny F. Sompie said on Wednesday.

The tabloid, which was distributed to Islamic boarding schools and mosques across Java, sparked outrage among Jokowi supporters for wrongly portraying him as a Christian of Chinese descent, and not a Javanese Muslim.

Obor Rakyat founder Setiyardi Boediono as well as its editor, Darmawan Sepriyossa, have been named suspects for publishing an illegitimate publication and defaming Jokowi.

Setiyardi is known as an assistant to a special presidential staffer in the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono administration, while Darmawan is an editor of online news portal Inilah.com.

In relation to the case, Ronny said that the police had collected testimony from linguists and Press Council officials.